But I also share what not to do so you don't waste the same amount of time as we did!

Rock Candy

I'm going to show you the method I use to make sugar crystals into rock candy with your kids because I've had my failures with growing crystals and we prefer our homeschool method which seems to work best.

Place the water and sugar in a saucepan and stir well as you bring to the boil. You seem to have added an awful lot of sugar to this experiment but it'll make your crystals grow better.

When your mixture is boiling, add some food coloring to the mix.

If you want to be extra daring, visit the spice isle for other food flavorings. Turmeric and mint are possibilities, and growing lemon flavored rock candy crystals should go down well with your kids.

Leave to cool while you prepare the jar where your rock candy crystals will grow.

Any see-through container will do, but we like homeschool mason jars. Tie a piece of string to a teaspoon handle or a Popsicle stick so that it's suspended in the middle. You don't want your string touching the sides or bottom of the jar.

Pour your slightly cooled sugar mixture up to the top of the jar and cover with something to stop the dust getting in - a paper towel will do fine.

Now comes the hard part! Get your kids to watch your crystal experiment but don't touch for a week. Take out and enjoy your string of beautiful homeschool rock candy crystals!

Problems With Growing Sugar Crystals

If the top of your jar begins to crust over with crystals you
can just break them up and throw them away. But if crystals begin to
form on the bottom you're best to put the string and solution in a new container.

You need to use a string made of cotton or wool, not nylon, or your crystal experiment probably won't work.

The biggest problem is getting your kids to wait a week for their rock candy!

Home School Science

Easy science experiments are a great way for kids to learn homeschool science, as our free homeschooling curriculum shows.

Your rock candy experiment has enabled you to show your kids what happens when you create a supersaturated solution
by first heating a saturated sugar solution (a solution in which no
more sugar can dissolve at a particular temperature) and then allowing
it to cool. A supersaturated solution is unstable — so the sugar will come out of solution, forming what's called a precipitate.

Over time, the water will evaporate slowly from the solution.
As the water evaporates, the solution becomes more saturated and sugar
molecules will continue to come out of the solution and collect on the
seed crystals on the string.

I don't know if your kids are interested in any of that, but if
they're like William who loves numbers in our homeschool they might be
mind blown to know that their finished rock candy will be made up of
about a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) molecules!

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